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Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

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Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#291

Post by ilyagr »

geoka9 wrote: post #202
eXpl0it3r wrote: post #176

Here in Switzerland we have some of the highest mobile prices ($30+) [1], yet our mobile providers will not remove the fee like the rest or Europe. Our politician try to enforce every single new EU-law, but when there's once something that would benefit the people, they come up with many excuses why this couldn't be applied and how Switzerland isn't part of the EU and doesn't have to follow through... [1] https://www…

Amazing, $30 is considered high for a mobile plan. In Canada it's the price of the lowest end plan from the lowest end provider. A plan from a big name provider will be at least $60 with capped data.

My guess is that people calling you also have to pay high prices per minute, as is common in Europe. So, the price doesn't include incoming calls.

Not sure whether Canada world like US or like Europe.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#292

Post by literallycancer »

andmarios wrote: post #102
_miroz wrote: post #38

I'm wondering why the regulation was necessary and why the free market forces didn't bring the prices or roaming down? What are the forces in telecom industry that kept the prices so high (assuming that the prices were higher then necessary)?

There is no free market. There can be only so many telcos in one country anyway, so instead of a race to the bottom, telcos of each country form cartels. In Greece for example, we have 3 mobile operators and they announce exactly the same changes to their plans within a couple weeks difference. Things like “we increase our basic plan by 5 euros” or “you have to top up your prepaid phone at least once every 3 months i…

There can be any number of telcos, the telephony regulator just needs to force them to share the infrastructure.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#293

Post by lostlogin »

Paul-ish wrote: post #273
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of thing used to happen in Israel too. Every time the government introduced a new regulation aiming to reduce mobile costs, the three companies would respond by simultaneously raising prices. And then the government used the nuclear option--They licensed two new mobile operators. And the prices plummeted.

Why is that the nuclear option? I would expect more competition to be the go to solution.

That logic doesn't work with telecoms, or with other big infrastructure type companies - water, power, sewerage.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#294

Post by kungtotte »

filleokus wrote: post #171
Symbiote wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard monthly contract price, 150kr/month or whatever, is the big number that customers look at when signing a contract. It's where the companies compete, so they can't increase the prices beyond a reasonable amount. There's no longer the hidden cost of being caught with a bill for 500kr after returning from a European holiday.

That's true, and I agree that the high bill is nice to avoid. But also, I think it's classic pro-regulation-people to be surprised by companies levying the fee on the end customers. I guess also, that for most consumers, they would rather have some other system (reasonable way to buy cheap roaming-data?) for those European holidays instead of paying 10-30 SEK extra per month, for ever. I would guess most people don't…

I'm sure there are lots of people who roam a lot; people travel on business all the time, truck drivers cross borders all the time, anyone living along the border to Norway or Finland goes across a lot, anybody in Skåne is an hour or two away from Denmark, and let's not forget the thousands who take the ferries over to Finland and Åland.

And who is going to buy a roaming package when you're gone for at most 24 hours? A week in Greece or Mallorca and it makes sense with something like that.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#295

Post by kungtotte »

jahnu wrote: post #93
Retric wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If roaming is free, can't you just use another countries cellphone provider? And if so, it's likely the cheapest country needed to raise rates should people from more expensive areas do so.

No. There are various limits. One of which is you have a limited amount of time you can roam for per year before you have to start paying. It's not too bad though. The real shit loophole is that they don't give you your full data allowance when roaming. It's needlessly complicated of course. Very rough idea: if you get 10gb for €10 a month you can roam for free for 2gb of that.

The amount of roaming you get depends on your carrier and contract. We get up to 20 GB of roaming or your contract data cap, whichever is lowest. E.g. me and my wife can roam for 20 GB because our contract is for 24 GB, but if we had a 12 or 6 GB plan we could only get 12 or 6 respectively.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#296

Post by acchow »

dheera wrote: post #282
rekshaw wrote: post #221

A lot of people complaining here. I am based in Luxembourg currently, and went to London last week. The peace of mind of landing in a foreign city and being able to use your phone as if at home truly is incredible. I could really feel the barriers to traveling fading. (Ironic that it was London, I know). BTW, my Luxembourghish telco actually aligned with the EU directive ahead of time (June 1st).

Agreed. I now use Google Fi (free roaming in 150 countries) but that didn't use to exist. When I was doing an internship in Switzerland about 9 years ago I often travelled to nearby countries on weekends and internet access was always a problem. Free Wi-Fi was largely nonexistent back then, and roaming charges were upwards of USD15 per megabyte (yes, mega ). Simply trying to use Google Maps to get to a hostel might c…

> Why didn't Orange UK, Orange France, Orange Switzerland, Orange Egypt, Orange Romania, etc. work together to give free calls and free internet access on each others' networks

Because they made boatloads of profit from charging their customers for roaming.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#297

Post by ptaipale »

patrickk wrote: post #276
mamon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roaming is relatively niche, but very expensive product, compared to other telecommunication services, so in my opinion it was fair to charge additional fee for that. Now that EU regulation is in place mobile operators are no longer allowed to charge the additional cost to people actually using roaming, they have to spread it across all their customers. So, net effect will be: poor people who do not use roaming (e.g.…

> So, net effect will be: poor people who do not use roaming (e.g. because they cannot afford vacations abroad) will pay for the convenience of middle and higher class people who travel a lot. You'd have to be fairly destitute to not be able to afford to travel within Europe[1]. For example, even people on social welfare in the UK and Ireland can afford cheap sun holidays to Spain or wherever. [1] https://www.ryanair…

However, people on social welfare in Spain hardly can afford a cheap... (ok not sun) holidays in UK and Ireland.

Not to mention Latvia or Bulgaria.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#298

Post by ptaipale »

rhino369 wrote: post #267
zurn wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most sparsely populated EU countries (Sweden & Finland) have good coverage and low prices. And mostly domestic (not foreign-owned) operaotrs.

You can't go by pure density. Imagine if you transported Mexico City into Antartica. It would be sparsely populated, but highly concentrated. Cellar coverage would be easy. Are rural areas in Sweden dominated by small, fairly dense towns? In America, even small cities are sprawling because of cars. People will live 10 miles outside of a small town of 3000 people.

Rural areas in Sweden and Finland are dominated by forests, swamps and lakes. You've got 3G or 4G practically everywhere.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#299

Post by ptaipale »

kaybe wrote: post #256
dx034 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the op said that telcos found a way around this, implicating that plans were changed to exclude roaming. But I haven't heard from anyone in UK or Germany who had roaming taken away. So it remains possible that a company will try it at some point but it will likely be very rare.

Would anyone get a plan without roaming? Looking at the size of European countries that would be unthinkable for anyone I know. Unless it's.. free or something. Maybe then.

I use LTE for my home's main internet connection, and it will never roam.

(I can't get fiber without paying five digits sums of €, and ADSL is around 3 Mbit/s).

So, if prices rise due to roaming charges, I'm paying more and get nothing.

Re: Europe mostly ends mobile roaming fees from today

#300

Post by Someone »

will_hughes wrote: post #272
stingraycharles wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small telcos rarely handle these things themselves and instead resell bigger telcos. If anything, I hope this triggers an investment in optimising this infrastructure; if i can use the internet without caring where the physical servers are, so should my phone be.

Sorry, when I said 'small national telco' I meant a telco for a small nation. If they have no way to recoup the additional cost of all the incoming visitors, then they can't invest in expanding infrastructure. It's probably a pretty limited scenario though.

Recouping costs is different from charge through the nose for international traffic.

Yesterday, that traffic typically was priced at euros per _mega_byte, starting at the first bit transferred; starting today that's at most €7.70 + VAT per _giga_byte, starting after you have used your (fairly generous) fair use allotment, going down to €2,50 per gigabyte in the coming years.

Naturally, countries who see many tourists heavily opposed this change and lobbied to keep the maximum price that the EU now has set high.

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